A conventional computer entity typically comprises a casing containing a processor, memory input/output ports and the like, a video monitor, a keyboard, and a tactile device for driving a graphical user interface, e.g. a mouse, trackball device or the like. Such prior art computers are well-known.
Another type of known computer entity is a headless computer entity, also called a “headless appliance”. Headless computer entities to prevent direct administration as they do not have a monitor, mouse or keyboard and therefore no means are provided to allow direct human intervention.
Headless computer entities have an advantage of relatively lower cost due to the absence of monitor, keyboard and mouse devices.
However, because headless computer entities do not have conventional user interfaces for human interaction, and generally do not have ports by which conventional keyboard or video monitors can be connected, this creates problems in manufacture of headless appliances, particularly in loading of operating systems and software into such devices, and in making sure that the device is self-correcting and reliable, since maintenance of the device by an end customer will not be practicable, and any faults will result in a service call out from a manufacturer of the device.
A key manufacturing problem with a headless appliance is how to create a cloneable “master disk” image for easy manufacturing. Requirements of this master disk image are that it needs to have all the appliance software pre-installed and it also needs to have a guaranteed uncorrupted copy of the primary operating system and default application data to be used as the operating system backup. However, the very nature of the headless appliance is to prevent direct administration. This therefore means that there are no means available to manually install any applications, or create a copy of the primary operating system. Moreover, the copy of the primary operating system must be a guaranteed uncorrupted back-up version. To obtain a guaranteed uncorrupted copy of the primary operating system requires that the primary operating system is not running at the time it is copied. For example, if the primary operating system was running at the time a copy of it was being made certain files would not be copied as these would be running and locked open, therefore resulting in a primary operating system copy having a large number of files missing.
An additional problem associated with manufacturing master disks for headless appliances is that valuable appliance disk space is used unnecessarily by application set up files, these set up files being for example software set up files which are used to install software on an appliance during manufacture. Currently such set up files are removed manually from the headless appliance via a user interface connected to the headless appliance. This removal of the set up files is performed during manufacturing at the expense of time and human resource.
Additional constraints on the manufacturing process require that the first time a master disk is booted after manufacture, it is required to generate a unique system identification (SID), for example, a Windows/NT® system identification. However, the very act of booting the primary operating system in the manufacturing process during pre-installation of the application software will set the system identification. The consequence of a master disk for use in a headless appliance configured with a set system identification is that when the master disk is cloned, at the final stages of the manufacturing process, every headless appliance configured with master disk will have an identical system identification. Additionally, following the creation of an operating system back-up, if the operating system back-up is required to perform an operating system rebuild the final stages of this rebuild process requires that a unique system identification is created. This therefore requires that when the operating system back-up is created in the manufacturing process it must be in a state such that upon its first boot it will generate a unique system identification.
Prior art approaches to the above problems involve the utilization of multiple personal computers (PCs) and involve many complex steps relying heavily upon human administration. Such prior art approaches are considerably time consuming, requiring the connecting and disconnecting of hardware to the headless appliance and the manipulation of the headless appliance's electronic configuration. Prior art solutions to the above problems create unreliable corrupted master disks due to the requirement for human intervention. The effect of the creation of unreliable master disks has severe cost implications as subsequently cloned master disks inevitably contain the same defects as the master disk from which the cloning was performed. In an attempt to address this problem, extensive checking of the master disk after the manufacturing process is performed prior to cloning. Such checking of the master disk must be conducted for each individual disk as each disk is subject to separate defects stemming from human intervention.
There is a need therefore for an improved method of manufacturing master disks that minimises or eliminates the need for human intervention during the manufacturing process. What is required is an automated manufacturing or build process that considerably reduces the amount of human intervention prior to the cloning of the master disk. The implementation of an automated build process that satisfies all the above requirements of the headless appliance will both alleviate the errors incurred in the manufacturing process due to human intervention and will reduce the time and cost involved in the manufacturing of master disks for use in headless appliances.